


Overflow

by Trefoil_9



Series: Undertale Flash Fictions [9]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, IT WAS THE SAME PERSON WHO SUGGESTED I WRITE MORE FLUFF, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SOMEONE ASKED ME TO MAKE THIS, Suicide, Swearing, Toriel is mentioned briefly, and her pie, but this premise is so wrong even her pie cannot help, why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 06:38:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12030261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trefoil_9/pseuds/Trefoil_9
Summary: "Gaster felt his soul turn black. He didn’t flinch."The "Everything is Awful" remix of early Ambertale, suggested by Menekah (WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME). Fanon-divergent, unrelated to the original storyline. A version in which Grillbz dies outside the Barrier.





	Overflow

 

He was dreaming again.

 _He was standing on the western stair, looking down into the city’s center, where the humans had retreated almost exclusively after years of war and plague. The monsters had, for the most part, ended up in the outer rings, but there had been a few in the center. But the person approaching him now was human. Most of them had stayed away, and this one carried no large weapons, so he let her approach._  
_“Please,” she said, stumbling over the bottom step._  
_“Speak up, what are you doing here?” he called down. She looked up. It was a thin, tired face glinting with tears. She was wrapped in a blanket._  
_“Please don’t leave without me… monsters are the only ones who have been kind to me.”_  
_It could be true, humans abused their own kind, and outcast humans had known to band together with the monsters. Moreso at the beginning of the war, but still._  
_“Please let me come up.”_  
_Gaster considered for a moment and nodded. She began climbing up, slowly, short of breath, one hand pressed against the wall close to her right, the other clutching her blanket over her chest. The stairway was narrow, designed so that only one could walk on it at a time. After she’d come within a few yards Gaster glanced behind him and started backing up to give her room, but was startled when Grillbz, standing behind him at the top of the wall, shouted something. Gaster spun, confused. The human had dropped the blanket. She flung her arm in an arclike gesture towards him, a silver knife glinting, brightening, reddening; and a slash of red magic detached itself from the blade and shot towards him. Gaster froze. Did he have time to use his shield? Would it help against human magic? Human magic could burn through almost anything._  
_He was shoved roughly to the side just before the magic hit him. He fell, crash-landed on a roof and rolled a few times before he could stop himself. When he did stop he was facing the wall, just in time to see Grillbz and the human hit the ground. Grillbz seemed to have pushed Gaster down and tackled her off the side—he must have dived immediately to do it. She was very dead, face charred beyond recognition._  
_Gaster realized that his soul was pounding. He turned and slid down the roof and dropped carefully to the ground._  
_Grillbz hadn’t moved and was crouched very stiff at the foot of the wall, head down, hands clasped to his breast. The flames dancing around him hadn’t sunk down. There was a trail of fire leading from the stairs down the side of the wall to the ground. It didn’t look like the fire magic he used in battles. He was bleeding, Gaster realized. He walked quickly towards him, but Grillbz held out his hand, growling indistinctly._  
_“Are you alright?”_  
_“….stay back.”_  
_His clothes were burning off him. Liquid fire dripped from the half-melted front of his brigandine. Most of the covering was gone, and some of the plates had fused together._  
_Gaster traveled in a wide arc to stand in front of him, at the foot of the stair. Finally Grillbz looked up. His expression was unreadable. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and stood with a grunt. It reassured Gaster a little to see him standing._  
_“….you should….. leave..go up the stairs.I’ll clean up down here.”_  
_“You’ll meet up with us? Are you sure you’re alright?”_  
_Grillbz looked searchingly at him and then smiled._  
_“.yeah.go.hurry, let’s get out of this place.”_  
_Gaster nodded and started up the stairs._  
_“.Gaster.”_  
_He stopped._  
_“.make sure you stay on the other side of the wall.”_  
_He looked serious, so Gaster said_  
_“I will.”_  
_That was a given if they were going to leave the city, right?_  
_He ran up the stairs, placing his shield over the still-burning splashes of fire where Grillbz had crashed through the human’s magic, and paused at the top, looking back. Grillbz was walking slowly toward the center of the city, leaving a trail of fire. He looked back and stopped, frowning. Gaster waved and started down the outer stairs. Grillbz kept walking._  
_The monsters were gathered in the square close to the foot of the stairs. Gaster walked towards them, and as he reached them a tremor traveled through the ground as something exploded behind him in the city. He almost didn’t turn, then the magic hit him, a wave of raw released magic travelling down the wind with sparks and pieces of charred matter likely knocked from houses. Gaster stopped._  
_“What was **that**?” a child said at about the height of his hip._  
_He resumed walking. Someone was shouting at him. With difficulty he focused on their voice. It was that jumpy cat monster with the club, saying something along the lines of “they’ve found us.” Gaster looked down the street._  
_Ah. Humans._  
_There were… several…. Eight of them, walking slowly down the middle of the street towards them, carrying swords. Gaster mutely motioned the cat monster, and the others by extension, to wait, and walked towards them. A shimmering shred of fabric drifted down onto his shoulder and hung there, slowly burning out to grey ash._  
_He was within shouting distance. One of the humans was shouting at him. He caught the words “what was that” again. He doubted that they really cared, at least at the moment. He kept walking until he thought his voice could reach them, then stopped. He was under the shadow of an arch that stood between him and the sun; the humans, beyond it, were black shapes against a washed-out cityscape of light._  
_“Please don’t,” he half-whispered._  
_He took a breath and flared his magic. His shillelagh appeared in his hand._  
_“Listen, I don’t want to hurt you. Go home. What do you hope to gain by preventing us from leaving?”_  
_The lead human shouted something. Gaster, not listening, turned to look over his shoulder at the monsters behind him, and the wisp of ash on his shoulder, disturbed by the motion, crinkled in the wind and brushed past his face, fluttering towards the arch. He caught a glimpse of fires climbing the city hill._  
_It hit him like a lead weight that he was the only thing between the refugees and these humans. He’d never succeeded in talking a human down._  
_He turned back. The lead human was under the arch, a few paces in front of the rest, spear balanced in his hand, half-raised. He’d throw it once he came out from under the arch._  
_Gaster’s eyes blazed. He seized the human’s soul and flung him straight upwards at full force, into the bottom of the arch. His head snapped to the side and lolled crazily on his neck when Gaster let him drop to the ground. He landed with a crunch and didn’t move. His head was tilted back at right angles to his body._  
_Gaster felt his soul turn black. He didn’t flinch._  
_The other humans had stopped. Again Gaster flared his magic, letting a dark EXP halo flicker in the air around his soul._  
_**“This is your chance to run.”**_  
_They ran._

_“Where’s your partner?”_  
_“…He stayed.”_  
_“Well yeah, I guessed the fires were something to do with him. I mean, is he meeting up with us later?”_  
_“…I don’t know.”_  
_“You don’t--? Can you find the way yourself?”_  
_“……Yes.”_  
_He looked back again at the fires still spreading behind them in the sunset. He’d forgotten something crucial about fire elementals. They didn’t dust, they ignited._  
_He’d walked over his lifeblood on the stairs and somehow it hadn’t occurred to him…_

He woke.

So it had been that one again.

After four years he’d thought the impact of the same dream might have lessened, but it hadn’t.

Sometimes they were worse…

_He was dragging some invisible weight across a deserted battlefield smoky with mist and dust. Grillbz appeared in front of him, bleeding fire from his mortal wound.  
“How could you be so **stupid**?” _

Sometimes he killed Gaster, and he woke up shaking. He felt he deserved it.

He got up. He had his own room now, which he valued, because it meant privacy in which to wrestle with sleep and nightmare-memories. His own house would be better, but he knew that it was more important to find housing for the monsters who didn’t have any arrangements yet, and it was an honor to be part of Asgore’s court. It was an honor he extended to everyone he could stand to, true, but still. He was a great monster.  
He washed his face and left for another day of helping the King rebuild a civilization. He didn’t do anything important, some planning and engineering that, probably, anyone could do, but Asgore seemed to like having him in the job, so alright.  
Toriel waylaid him as he tried to sneak past the kitchen and made him eat a slice of pie. It was, objectively, the best pie he’d ever had, excepting all the other pies she’d made of course. He wished he could appreciate it.

Daytime was a paradox. Dragging by impossibly slow and yet too fast. And then he was alone in his room again.

He’d been OK for a few nights now, this was probably going to be a bad one. He watched the ceiling disappear from his view.

…

His feet were very warm. He looked down in surprise.

This one was… a memory? He felt certain he knew this shallow cave, and the rain rushing across the entrance. He knew Grillbz had just come in a moment before and flung himself across the entire cave floor, like a tired dog. He was on his back, looking up at Gaster, who was seated or more accurately curled into a ledge. No wounds.

They looked at each other for a few moments. Grillbz smiled widely.

“Guess we both fucked up, huh?”

Gaster sat up with a strangled scream and hugged his knees.

_What the FUCK_

Why was he shaking? There hadn’t even been anything… wrong with him, this time.

…That was it. He was too real. He was too alive. And now, adding to his panic, Gaster couldn’t tell whether his dream had been a memory or was only a dream. He couldn’t shake its realness regardless.

He got up and left his room, letting the door slam behind him.

Asgore, dozing in the kitchen, raised his head at the sound. He’d been unable to sleep and had gotten up to brew an early pot of tea. He followed Gaster outside. Out of the Capitol. Through the snowy place he hadn’t named yet. He certainly was taking a long walk. Asgore kept out of sight, not wanting to bother him, but perhaps he’d want company on the way back. He didn’t often slam his door like that.

They reached the place of shining water, which he also still hadn’t named. Gaster struck off across the cave floor and, when he reached a dropoff, began pacing back and forth in the space in front of it. Asgore settled himself behind some bioluminescent brush. Gaster was still pacing rapidly, apparently untired by his long walk there. Asgore hoped he’d calm down soon, at this rate they’d be late for breakfast.  
Gaster was talking now, signing at the same time in jerky half-motions. Asgore wondered if he should go, but decided not to when he realized he couldn’t understand what Gaster was saying anyway. It sounded like Greek, something he’d never taken the time to learn. Gaster sounded fluent. Amazing.

Gaster sank to his knees and placed his hand on a stone, then lifted it and stared at it as if it was something he’d never seen before. He ran his fingers over the rough surface. Then he stood and placed it in one of his coat pockets. He resumed his pacing, but slower, watching the ground. When he found another stone he gave it the same treatment, except it went in the other pocket.  
…Alright. Whatever helped him was good, Asgore supposed. Perhaps they could start a stone collection. There were any manner of interesting crystals in the Underground.

Gaster had stopped pacing. He was standing at the edge of the dropoff, buttoning his coat against the cold cave draft that blew in over the lake, one of the deepest in the Underground. He looked much calmer, to Asgore’s relief.

So it was with complete noncomprehension that he watched him walk off the cliff into air and drop out of sight.

Several moments passed before it clicked. Asgore erupted out of the bush and sprinted to the cliff’s edge.

The water had already settled back to its smoking opacity, not a ripple to mark where he’d gone.

 

**A/N:**

_So lay me down_  
_Let the only sound_  
_Be the overflow_  
_Pockets full of stones_

-Florence and the Machine, _What the Water Gave Me_

_...._

*headcanon: skeletons can drown, it just takes a while. 

And this fic.. is really not a flashfic even by my loosest standards. It's a oneshot. Oh well, it's going with the others. 


End file.
